Along with the majority of his tales, Poe’s “The Black Cat” is a grim plot that includes the downfall of its narrator in order to portray a human nature contrary to the archetypal transcendentalist version. The undoing of the chronicler is found in the unraveling of his mental state, which leads him to commit draconian actions on his cat, including cutting its eye out and then hanging it. Poe further emphasizes the narrator’s
The main themes of Edgar Allan Poe’s works are death, perversity, revenge and destruction. The settings he employed in the given short stories, especially in The Fall of the House of Usher and The Black Cat are Gothic. Therefore, naturally the mood of these stories would be dark and sepulchral. However, this is not a trivial employment undertaken to put the reader in a certain kind of zone.
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat,” the unnamed narrator recounts the way his life has fallen apart due to a series of terrifying incidents he has with his pet cat, Pluto. As the story develops, his actions grow more grotesque and immoral as he tries to rid himself of the animal. In one of these instances, a fire forces the narrator to move from his well-tended house to a smaller, run-down building, which represents the deterioration of his state of mind. In this way, Edgar Allan Poe uses elements of setting to suggest that when people disregard their conscience, the resulting moral and mental decay will end in their retribution.
Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Black Cat,” depicts a male narrator who begins to be malicious due to his ongoing consumption of alcohol which in turn, results in his ultimate demise. In summarization, the narrator commits multiple heinous crimes under the influence of alcohol and that can eventually portray his lost of sanity. Furthermore, by studying Sigmund Freud’s Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis along with Poe’s short story, we can perceive the short story on a psychoanalytical level. Therefore, through the lens of psychoanalysis, it is noticeable that the narrator uses alcohol as a vehicle to represses his emotions, however, it only causes him to be more violent which results in his murders of his beloved cats and wife.
“The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe is one of Poe’s greatest literary works that embodies his signature themes of death, violence, and darkness. Poe’s main character begins his narration of his horrible wrongdoings regarding them as a “series of mere household events” (Poe 705). However, this is where Poe’s satire and irony begins and the story progresses to show the deranged mindset of this character as he tries to justify his actions. As the main character proceeds to rationalize his crime, Poe is able to convey a sense of irony through his use of foreshadowing, metaphors and symbolism.
Edgar Allan Poe was well known for his dark stories such as, “The Black Cat” and “The Tell Tale Heart.” His stories and poems focused mainly on death and the sinister side of a man’s mind. In general, many of his main characters were not mentally stable or were dealing with alcohol abuse. Poe’s life never seemed to offer him a break, he lived hardships after hardships. Nevertheless, his pain and problems contributed to numerous of his writings and poems. The reader is able to see the connections between his life and the characters. “The Tell Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” although have many similarities in style, also have many differences.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” follows the unnamed main character as he slowly devolves into madness brought about by his severe alcoholism and subsequent bizarre abhorrence of cats. The narrator starts as a kind and loving person but by the end of the story is a violent and remorseless deviant. Throughout the story it is apparent that the narrator is drifting further and further from reality. As his drinking worsens, the narrator finds himself becoming increasingly violent, irrational and depraved.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” is a tale of a man who suffers from alcoholism. In this tale the protagonist whose name is never revealed is deranged by his addiction. The story begins with the narrator describing his love for all his pets. He says “I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them.” (Poe p.1) Although, the narrators’ personality alters when his beloved black cat becomes a falling victim to his atrocity. After arriving home intoxicated one night the man seized his cat Pluto and proceeded to carve out one of the cats’ eyes from the socket. As he awoke the next morning to this frightful
Edgar Allen Poe was one of the most influential and important writers of the nineteenth century. He was the first writer to try to make a living only writing. One of Poe’s most popular short stories, “The Black Cat”, is considered horror fiction or gothic fiction which Poe is known for in his books and short stories because it was a popular genre during his days. In Poe’s short story, “The Black Cat”, Poe uses a horror fiction genre, a mentally deranged and evil narrator/character, and symbolism of death to make a thrilling story with tons of suspense, drama, and gruesome detail.
The psychology or mental state of the narrator of Edger Allan Poe’s short story “The Black Cat” is a broad area to analyze. The human mind is one of the most articulate system that is made in this world. It’s difficult to understand everybody’s actions and doings because everyone possesses their own unique patterns of thinking. Today, the world of psychology is hard at work to try to figure out the best answers to the questions we have about the mid. Even before the subject of psychology was produced, some writers loosely described the psychology and everything that goes into it. Edger Allan Poe was one of them who portrayed his characters in way that the reader could look further in to their actions and their behaviors to understand the mind better. Poe seemed to have an understanding and fascination for the human, and “The Black Cat” is one of them. The protagonist of the story and his psychology has brought into light in this short story. In this work, Edgar Allan Poe presents the main character, the protagonist, who becomes victim to many complex mind issues such as guilt, perversity, superstitions, revenge, and reverse psychology.
Stories like the “black cat”, “The tell- tale heart”, “The masque of the red death”, and “Morella” all deal with horror, murder, and sudden death. The short story, ‘The black cat’ gives the audience a story line visual of the mind of an alcoholic and the way his behavior changes over time, in different scenarios the character starts to turn abusive to the animals that he once loved. The man then starts to isolate himself from the black cat which was his favorite animal until one day he snaps and kills the black cat by hanging it to a tree with a rope. Days later a cat comes back around him that shows almost the same identity of the black cat, but the only difference is the white patch which is the bottom part of the cat body. the man then starts to grow jealous as his wife shows attention to the new cat which then leads him to murder his wife and stuffing her dead body in a wall, he later confesses to the crime and spends life in prison. This story is very dark and gives a clear identification of the mind of a troubled individual who then takes out his anger by being abusive to the animals in his environment and later his wife. Different aspects in Poe’s stories look deep into the mind of a person and the reasons that leads to murder and death.
Edgar Allan Poe is well-known for his captivating tales of the macabre through eloquence and wit. In many of his short stories, Poe was able to exploit his audience's fears through allegory and descriptive details of murder and madness. One of Poe's captivating, yet mad, narrators helms "The Black Cat," a tale of paranoia, alcoholism, and murder. There are several things that make the narrator an intriguing character including his psychological state, the imp of the perverse, and the effect that alcoholism has on him.
Romanticism is an intellectual, spiritual, and literary movement that begins at the start of the nineteenth century and concludes at the beginning of the twentieth century. Of the many characteristics that are associated with Romanticism, the characteristics that are most evident in literature from this period are the characteristics of individuality and imagination. The author Edgar Allen Poe exhibits these characteristics in his works “The Black Cat”, and the “The Raven”.
Within us, we have the dark and the bright side. We do the good, but have evil thoughts and some people act on it, thinking it may drag them to feel good in doing so. This informative short-story provides a perfect example on how we take control of our mind. Edgar Allan Poe, the author of “The Black Cat”, develops the central idea that violence solves problems. On the eve of an unnamed narrator’s death, he writes a story of how his life collapsed, turning around his love for everybody and falling into a big pile of a hopeless mess and madness by committing brutal actions.
When looking at a piece of literature through a psychological approach it is easy to apply Sigmund Freud’s theories of the id, ego, and superego, which focus on conscious and unconscious behavior. When analyzing many of Poe’s works, critics tend to look through a psychological lens. Specifically in Poe’s The Black Cat. Some critics believe that Poe’s alcoholism is reflected in the piece, but many, such as James W. Gargano “advised the tales readers to avoid the biographical pitfall of seeing Poe and the first-person narrator of The Black Cat as ‘identical literary twins’” (Piacentino 1). It is due to his childhood that Poe’s narrator in The Black Cat subconsciously places animals before humans, thus leading to him to murder his wife.